All right, but what major German interests were being fought over from Penang?

Weren't these diverted resources more urgently needed elsewhere, such as contributing to the Brit. Isles blockade?

__________________

All right, unconventional forces using unconventional tactics may have success, but the Brits gave the Tirpitz the same treatment, and also had a couple of contacts with the Italian Navy, at Tarento and at Cape Matapan, so it was not all British defeats in the Med...

Italy was un unsinkable aircraft carrier, so did Mussolini say, but if the "aircraft carrier" was safe then the same did not apply to the battleships, cruisers, destroyers etc. At least the unconventional part worked ok, as for the rest they were a pretty group of white elephants.

__________________

The ships sunk from Australia to Suez or british isles would be considered a part of the Blockade of Britain, just longer range blockade. Also India-Burma traffic might be another target for Penang boats,as well as ships heading round tip of south america from New Zealand & Australia.

Whatever you say, Chr., but that sounds somewhat far-fetched in more ways than one. One of the components of the German strategy in the Battle of the Atlantic was the economic suffocation of the UK, that's what the blockade was for, and I don't see that happening off Sumatra.

In any case, I still believe that a submarine base at Lorient for example would find itself easier supplied than the one at Penang. The keywords for me are "out on a limb".

A Google search on "german submarine penang" raises some interesting links.

[ 30. July 2004, 03:56 PM: Message edited by: Za Rodina ]

__________________

I do not believe that the fighting in the Med was all British defeats. I was simply taking issue with someone else's claim that the Italian Navy "was useless in Med" by pointing out the war-time achievements of Italy's frogmen.

As for Italy's conventional naval forces, they weren't entirely a "pretty group of white elephants." World War II magazine recently ran an article on a 1943 battle between German and Italian naval forces off Corsica in which Commander Carlo Fecia di Cossato - an Italian submarine ace who had previously been decorated by Germany - defeated the German naval force.

World War II: Table of Contents for World War II - March 2004; 'Attack and Sink' by Vincent P. O'Hara

Regia Marina Italiana: Commander Carlo Fecia di Cossato

Regia Marina Italiana: In Bookstores ...

[ 01. August 2004, 10:45 AM: Message edited by: Deep Web Diver ]

__________________
This information has been posted for non-commercial, educational, and research purposes.
- - - -
"The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here." - Abraham Lincoln, Nov. 19, 1863
- - - -
"The past is not dead. In fact, it's not even past." - William Faulkner

OK, frog men were effective, pioneering as well, but frogmen play no part in defending a landing. & Cossato more than likely had better ships than the Germans in this skirmish. Italian U-boats produced maybe one or 2 major aces.